


Unwrapped

by dirtymudblood



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Christmas, F/M, Fetish, Hogwarts Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:15:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28227513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtymudblood/pseuds/dirtymudblood
Summary: But for Draco, it wasn’t what was in the presents. No. In fact, he took a great deal of time to even open each individual package. What Draco really enjoyed about Christmas were the bows.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 55
Kudos: 265
Collections: Twistmas 2020 - A Dark Remix Xmas Fest





	Unwrapped

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [Twistmas2020](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Twistmas2020) collection. 



> My submission for the Twistmas prompt: ribbons/bows

When Draco Malfoy was a child, there was nothing he loved more than Christmas morning.    
And I know what you’re thinking. What rich, mollycoddled child did  _ not  _ enjoy Christmas morning with all its splendor? You’d be correct. There were no expenses spared in the Malfoy home to dote on their only son. Between hand-cut jewel cufflinks that he didn’t particularly care for, or need so young, and the newest edition of Nimbus brooms, that he didn’t know how to ride yet; his Christmases were the epitome of luxuriant. 

But for Draco, it wasn’t what was in the presents. No. In fact, he took a great deal of time to even open each individual package. What Draco really enjoyed about Christmas were the bows. 

Ribbons. Organza, velvet, taffeta, habutai. Bows. Classic, layered, dior, mums. 

There was something so fine, so elegant, so ornate in the loops of a perfect bow made with perfect ribbon. It would make Draco’s pulse race in his throat each Christmas Eve as he laid in bed wondering what kind of bow Mippy, his house elf, would arrange for him. 

It was no secret that as the lone Malfoy child in a 10,000 square feet manor with an emotionally distant mother and aloof father, that he was lonely. Mippy, who was given to Draco as a baby to care for him in his parents absence, was his only companion. 

It was Mippy who taught him to walk, to talk, to eat with his silverware, and to tie his shoes. Simple at first. Bunny ear, bunny ear. Over, under, around, and through. But the older Draco got, the more complex did his lacing. Mippy taught him checkerboard, riding bow, ladder, hidden knot. 

Unfortunately like all living things, except a rare species of jellyfish, Mippy died the March before Draco boarded the Hogwarts express for his first year. She had come down with a rather nasty cold that Draco didn’t think too much of, being only a sheltered child and not thinking too much into the grey of her skin or the lowering of her ears. He had visited her only once in her chambers, not to inquire about her healthy but to have her promise that she would send Draco his presents at school. 

She had promised, adamantly, that she would and not only that, but she would also learn new knots and ask Ms. Narcissa for one of her old dresses so Mippy could cut it up into special ribbons. Draco had gone to bed that night practically buzzing with excitement.

When she died, just a few weeks later, Draco was angry. Stages of grief between children and adults are not varied, but while in adults anger may lead to guilt; in children, it leads to blaming,  _ Why  _ did she have to leave me? She  _ promised  _ she would send me ribbons,  _ new  _ ribbons, and then she had to go and  _ die? _

His parents had written his anger off as a similar feeling to losing a valuable toy. That when they introduced Draco’s new elf, Bop, he would forget all about his old caregiver. 

In Draco’s first meeting with Bop he placed a long, green silk ribbon in the elf’s grubby little hands. 

“Make a bow.” he demanded of the elf. 

The elf had tried miserably. The loops were uneven. The tails were too long, then too short. The knot wasn’t right. Draco had left the room with Bop behind him, the elf’s bottom lip quivering and hitting himself over the head repeatedly from disappointing his new master. 

By the time Christmas of that year rolled around, Draco was less than excited about the stack of presents that would appear from the manor at the end of his bed. Christmas morning Draco sneered at the carefully wrapped, bowless packages that taunted him. The presents stayed there, untouched, until the new year where Blaise had begged to open them. Draco consented. There was nothing inside that he wanted more than he wanted his bows. 

His infatuation for ribbons and knots and bows had morphed into something else entirely by the age of 14. Pansy, who had always kept her hair bobbed and sleek, had let her hair grow past her shoulders over the summer. Draco had walked in on her in the Slytherin common room braiding her hair; twisting and cording and binding it behind her neck tightly. The sight of it, the image of him slowly unraveling each knot, made his heart race. They had their first kiss that day. 

For the remainder of the year Draco kept himself busy with Pansy’s hair. She taught him to do a simple braid, but soon that wasn’t enough. He quickly began researching and trying new styles; French, ladder, twist, lace. Loose, finnish, linear. Until he slowly unravel the braids and do it all over again. So often and so much that Pansy seemed to have a constantly occurring headache. 

He was in love with her. Pansy. Her and her shiny, tight braids. Until they returned from summer break into their sixth year and she had returned to her chin length cut. 

She had squealed when she saw him on the train platform, her new hair swishing around her ears. Pansy opened her arms as if to cling to him, but Draco brushed past her. Too put off by the loss of his play thing that he barely paid any mind to her fallen face or the way Daphne had to spend the rest of the train ride to Hogwarts consoling her friend. 

It was that year that Draco’s infatuation became something else entirely. And it had all begun with  _ her.  _

While Pansy’s hair was thin and sleek and manageable, Hermione Granger had a mane of frizzy curls and tight ringlets that made Draco crinkle his nose. Did muggles not have any product to maintain themselves? 

But then a particular hot day in October came. It had come seemingly out of nowhere, it had only just been cool enough the day before for a light sweater. The school had little time to prepare for the shift in weather and so it became suffocatingly hot in the castle. 

The potions classroom in particular was unnaturally stuffy and Draco found himself rolling up his sleeves and undoing his collar as he leaned over his cauldron. Pansy, who had decidedly not spoken to him since the beginning of term, was off to the side slicking her short hair back into a sham of a ponytail. 

Draco looked off to the side where Potter and Weasley seemed to be doing similar activities to cool themselves down, but Granger sat completely red faced and perspiring as she stirred her potion. 

Small beads of sweat fell from her nose and into the pot making the concoction hiss and boil. Draco watched as Professor Snape sneered and instructed Daphne to supply the girl an elastic to pull her sweaty hair away from the caldron, less she cause the entire classroom to explode. 

Daphne did so begrudgingly, watching as Granger wrestled with her locks to pull it behind her neck. She had only just begun to pull the band around her hair when it snapped loudly. Daphne huffed as Granger sheepishly handed the ruined band back to her, her face even more red than before. 

On the other side of the room, Luna Lovegood (who had made her hair into something that could only resemble a birds nest atop her head) offered her friend a long string of fabric instead. 

Draco swallowed as Granger took it into her hands graciously, twisting the material around her long fingers. She began to once again push her hair back from her face, unsticking it from her damp neck before twisting the bow under her head and around the pile of curls. 

Draco’s breath stuttered as he watched her struggle with the ribbon, tying it first too loose that her curls sprang out of it once more. She huffed with defeat, her hair once again falling into her perspiring face. 

Her two dolts of friends paid no attention to her struggle as she attempted to grapple with her hair who seemed to be putting up its own fight. 

Before he could stop himself, Draco was walking over to her, a sneer perfectly crafted onto his face. 

“Give it,” he demanded, opening his palm to her. 

She looked startled, her big eyes blinking up at him through thick lashes and flushed cheeks. Potter and Wealsey had paid attention then, inquiring what he ever thought he was doing and hissing at him to return to his side. All Draco did was quirk an eyebrow at them, then at Hermione, curling his fingers in a come hither motion to remind her he was waiting for the ribbon to be passed to him. 

She tucked her bottom lip into her mouth and furrowed her own brows at him, a look that he had seen her give only the most complex of problems in class. He swallowed. 

Suddenly, a cool piece of fabric grazed his fingers along with a slight scraping of her short nails as she deposited the ribbon into his hand. 

When he looked back up at her, her back was turned to him and exposing the long spirals of hair that covered her shoulders. He reached out tentatively to pull the hair away from her neck. Potter and Weasley were still scowling over their shoulders at him, but Draco could only focus on peeling the damp curls from the long columb of her throat. His fingertips became slick with her sweat and while that would normally have made him recoil in disgust, he found his heart thrumming wildly. 

“Oi, Malfoy,” Weasley broke through the spell. “Get on with it then.”

Sneer still firmly in place to disguise his exhilaration, gathered both sides of her hair into his fists. He almost gasped at the feeling. He always imagined Granger’s hair to be knotty or brittle. This was soft. So soft that he felt it sliding through his fingers like water. It was thick, too. His hands were almost completely encased by her hair. Draco shivered imperceptibly. Merlin, it smelled like strawberries. 

Carefully sectioning her hair off into several strands, letting the long pieces curl around his fingers, Draco began to plait her hair tightly behind her.

It was so different from Pansy’s hair. While Pansy’s was pliable, this was a battle. A war between him and a million ringlets which he intended to win. He could feel a bead of sweat start from his temple and drip down to the curve of his jaw. 

When a curl would escape his tight plait, he would almost shiver in delight. Draco loved that it was fighting him, that it was disobeying him. The braid would be all the sweeter afterwards. 

By the time he reached the last few notches of the braid, he was practically panting silently through his nose. He knotted the ribbon on the short strand at the end and tightened it with a looped bow. 

And then, for seemingly no reason, he tugged on the end. Not hard. Just enough for the braid to pull against her scalp and when she hissed softly, Draco felt something drop low into his belly. Rolling and tugging against his navel in a way that he had only felt before, alone. 

She turned to him suddenly, her eyes not accusing but wide and curious. Draco stopped breathing as she took in his face, which had lost its sneer about halfway into the braid. Instead, his lips were parted slightly and he looked stunned. 

She assessed him, an odd glint in her eyes. 

“Thanks, Malfoy,” she said slowly, “you’re good at that.”

Draco swallowed and nodded, unable to think of a witty retort or some sort of insult that would shield him from this scrutiny. He nodded again, thinning his lips and walking back to his seat. Pansy and Daphne were opened mouthed and gaping, whispering silently amongst themselves. 

Draco didn’t care. He couldn’t. His head was pounding and his heart was hammering and his felt an ache deep in his stomach that pulsed wildly between his legs. 

He clenched his hands together tightly in front of him. How could he be so stupid, so carefless? 

His eyes drifted over against his will to the other side of the room, where Granger was peaking over her shoulder at him. The same stupid glint in her eye. 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed! I'm debating adding a second part with... adult Draco and Hermione and ribbons if you'd be interested in that *side eye emoji* 
> 
> Talk to me on tumblr: dirty-mudblood.tumblr.com


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